Their Road
by WhatWeReallyWant67
Summary: All she has is the stuffed teddy he won for her and that picture. She wonders how long the bear will smell like his cologne. His mom gives her his guitar. She strums it. It feels like him. Dark Puckleberry.


Their Road

By WhatWeReallyWant67

AN: Angsty,Dark. A little AU, maybe a lot AU. It's a really continuous narrative, so I hope I don't leave people behind in this weird kind of trippy idea I got going on.

Rachel is the last one to leave. Probably because she's the last to show up.

She's there pretty fucking late, and Quinn fell asleep about an hour ago.

The halls are quiet and he just looks at the little girl. The little person he made.

"Noah?" She calls. He doesn't turn, his face is still pressed up against the glass.

"You don't have to stand out here, you know. You can go in and hold her." She suggests.

"I can't." He replies. He runs his hand over his stubble.

"Why not?" she questions.

"Because," he breathes, "because it would feel more like I was abandoning her. Letting her go."

"You're doing the right thing."

He can't help but think how intimate this is, how this is just him and her. Nohnoh and Raybear again.

"It sure doesn't feel fucking right." He looks down at her. She wipes the tears from his eyes.

"It never will." Rachel clarifies. "But, do you love Quinn enough to make it work?"

"No. I don't love her." He says, putting a callused finger up to the glass and attempting to outline his little princess. "Not anymore, at least."

It's awkward between them.

"I just…I want her to be special. I want her to go places, see things. Things outside of Lima." Puck confesses.

She leans on his arm.

"She will. She'll thank you, one day."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Rachel's a master of lying through her teeth, and Puck notes this.

"Thanks." He says quietly.

She thinks that she hasn't seen him like this in a while.

"You've grown up, Noah." She says, smiling.

"Not very fucking much." He laughs at himself.

"Yes, very much. Two weeks ago we wouldn't have been having this conversation."

"Two weeks ago I wasn't a father. Not really." He sucks in the air around them. He catches the scent of Rachel's perfume. It's nice.

"I like this. Less like Puck, more like Noah." She smiles and turns. "Need a ride?"

"Yeah. Yeah that'd be cool." He nods solemnly and takes a final look at his little girl. It's the last time, he thinks dimly.

He starts to mist up a little as they walk through the corridors. Puck is still in the costume. Rachel was being as informal as he'd ever seen her, wearing sweats and an oversized NYU sweatshirt.

She sees him crying and she slips her pinky inside of his. They hold pinkies. He's not an obnoxious crier, she recalls. It's more like a noble tear, each one is a quiet drip.

It's nice, Puck thinks, and kinda weird. She was the one given up, he was the one who gave away. And yet – they're able to be so comfortable.

Maybe it's because he can still remember taking baths with her. Maybe it's because he can still remember that she was the one who had held him when his dad left. Maybe it's because they were each the others firsts. Firsts of everything.

Usually they're not comfortable.

But tonight as they drive home, there's a silent promise passing between their intertwined hands.

_Us? _The hands said _We need to stick together. _

OOOO

After that, she starts to call him just to talk, and sometimes she comes over and bakes his sister cookies. He takes it as a kind of warming. Warming his heart, keeping it warm so he wouldn't shut people out. He's shut people out before.

He's shut her out before.

It's summer now, so he gets up at 11. His mom is at work, and Rachel is cooking breakfast. She has trouble with egg products, but she can handle cooking kosher bacon and a stack of pancakes. His mother really doesn't stress the "kosher" bit, but if memory serves him, which it usually does, then the Berrys are pretty good about being kosher.

He comes down and she smiles at him.

"Good morning, Noah." She hands him the plate and he sits across from his sister.

He starts to devour the food, and it's good. Rachel turns off the stove and cleans up when they're done.

They do this every morning.

In the afternoon, his sister goes to her friends house.

Noah didn't start up his pool cleaning business, if only because he didn't really feel like sleeping with cougars would solve anything.

Instead Rachel stays. On rainy days they go to see movies. On sunny days they go for walks. He would think that Rachel would be with her boyfriend, but she sees him "plenty" at night.

Puck even gets the nerve to ask her if Finn knows who she's with.

"No. I told him I have an acting program this summer."

"He believes you?"

"Why wouldn't he?"

He doesn't say anything in reply to it.

In the beginning of the summer, it's awkward. But as it goes on, it's more like they were friends again. It's more as if they're two again and they're playing car basher with her Malibu Barbie Convertible and his GI Joe Jeep.

There is a road, it goes through the woods. They always go there one way or another. It's where they both had their first kiss in the third grade.

Sometimes they hold hands. Sometimes. But it's not romantic. It's…it's a comfort thing.

One day they're on the road and they're holding hands and he says something funny, and she laughs. The sun catches her hair as it blows in the breeze, and all he can think about is how beautiful she looks. That's when he get's it; when it finally fucking clicks.

He's in love with Rachel. _So _fucking in _love. _

She's dating Finn. He stops walking. She stops with him.

"What is it, Noah?" She asks.

"We can't do this." He drops her hand.

"Do what? What are we doing?" she's confused.

"You're dating Finn."

"Yes, we've already been over this. We're not _doing _anything Noah. We're just friends." She says it as if she's talking to a two year old.

"Then what's with the fucking hand holding?"

"Noah, we've been doing this for what, a month now? Just calm down."

"Calm down? Rachel? I can't calm down. Because we can't do _this. _I have a baby sleeping in a crib at your mothers house, because of something like _this._" He snarls. "Besides, if I wanted to do something like this, I certainly wouldn't do it with you."

"Don't you push me away again, Noah." She says, tears rolling down her face. "Don't get afraid of your feelings! Just let it happen! I'm not going to leave you." She grabs his arm. "No matter what you _say _or _do _I'm not leaving your side."

_Rachel and Him are sitting in his bedroom, and he's crying._

_ It's the last day of summer before high school. _

_ "He left, Rachel. He really left." _

_ There's nothing she can say to that. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him. _

_ Like really kisses him. Kisses him so hard that he can't even remember why he was upset in the first place. She wants to comfort him however she can, so she doesn't protest when his hand goes under her shirt and grasps her growing breast. _

_ "I want you, Rachel." He says quietly, only too. _

_ "You can have me." _

_ After their done, its short but sweet, he pulls up his boxers and goes downstairs. He comes up with a cartoon of chocolate ice cream and they devour it while watching the little television in his room and she goes home later. _

_ The next day, the first day of high school, she walks up to him in the hall. She smiles. He frowns. _

_ By the time she notices the chill zone cup in his hand it's too late, and she's covered with slushy._

_ The next day he comes to school sporting a Mohawk._

He smiles a little and laughs.

"You never have, have you?" He sits down on the side of the road and laughs some more. "You've always been there, just annoying me! God, Rachel!" He rolls around, and she's just lost in how funny he finds it. "and you wanna know the worst part?"

"Sure, enlighten me, Noah." She's waiting impatiently for him.

"I _fucking love _it." She starts to laugh to.

"Noah," She laughs as he grabs her and pulls her down, he tickles her until they're both rolling around in the dirt. Laughing and they don't even know why.

This is them; the jump from pure sadness to maddening happiness makes their heads spin. But that's what they love about each other: they don't have to make sense to work.

That night when Finn comes over they break up. He's amicable enough about it.

She tells Noah, and he smirks a little inwardly.

"Couldn't resist me, eh, Rachel?"

She gives him some obscenely long answer and he simply waves her off.

He kisses her quickly to get her to stop.

She smiles. He smiles.

He kisses her nose.

"You are so wrong for me," She laughs.

"But that's what makes it so fucking righteous."

She kisses him this time, and it doesn't take long for clothes to be removed.

He draws out this time, as if making up for the shortness of their first time.

It's magical. He's magical. The summer is magical.

But his breath, the morning after isn't so. She makes him go the bathroom with Listerine and he laughs the whole way there.

After that they're doing it everywhere. In the back of his truck, on a blanket by the lake, in his bedroom, in his bathroom, in her bathroom, even on her kitchen table.

It's the time on the kitchen table when she pants out that she loves him.

He quietly tells her that he loves her back.

She wraps her delicate arms around him and holds him until she hears her front door open and both the Berry fathers come home to their daughter being defiled on the kitchen table.

It's better when they see it's Noah; at least it's not some random boy, but he's not allowed to come through the front door that summer. Noah smiles. That doesn't include the window in her bedroom. Which has a tree outside it like Romeo and Juliet or some shit like that.

She wonders if they're together. She asks him one night when they're entangled on his couch watching some action movie.

He thinks about it genuinely. He nods.

"Okay."

"Cool."

"Noah?"

"Hmm?" He knows that's a pussy response, but that's exactly what Rachel has made him.

"When I go to New York to pursue my career…"

He tenses.

"Come with me?"

He relaxes.

"You jump, I jump, Rach."

"You like Titanic?"

"No, Sarah does." He refers to his little sister. Rachel accepts this and wraps her arms tighter around him. "I really do love you, you know."

"I know. I love you too."

"I was such a dick to you."

"I know." She kisses his chest. "A really big one."

He laughs at that.

"It doesn't matter anymore, does it?"

"Nope." She takes a big whiff of his cologne before adding. "Nothing matters but now."

"Damn skippy."

She giggles.

There's a carnival that comes through town occasionally, and they decide to go to it. They ride all the rides, he even wins her a teddy bear. They even get some random stranger to take a picture of them. It reminds her of the Notebook, it reminds him of Watchmen.

They accept the others difference in opinion, in accepting, they fight about it for three days. But they come back together because it's like kismet, them two. Or some shit.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

They're walking down their road and she's singing something, and he's singing too. He can hear a car coming and it weird him out because no one drives down this road besides them. He turns and he notices the car is swerving a lot. Right towards Rachel.

What happens is sort of a blur; He can hear his heart beating but that's really it. He jumps and pushes her out of the way, she falls to the ground and he tries to get out of the way, but the car hits him.

He goes flying. Rachel screams. The car stops and she runs after him to where she thought he went.

His body is all _wrong_. Like a contortionist. His arm is behind his head and his neck is twisted wrong. She sees a bone jutting out of his arm. His hips are out of place and she can tell by the glassy look in the eyes she loves, _oh god _he's dead.

She makes a sound that, in court, the driver compares to a crying dog. She collapses to her knees.

She crawls up beside him and wraps her arms around his head.

She's sobbing now, and she won't let go of him. The EMT's have to pry her off of him. She kicks and screams. They have to sedate her. She doesn't leave bed. All she has is the stuffed teddy he won for her and that picture. She watches Watchmen. She decides he's right. She wonders how long the bear will smell like his cologne.

His mom gives her his guitar. She strums it. It feels like him.

She feels the irony in her life; all wishing for one thing in her life to make her tony award material. Well, she laughs, this is as dramatic as it gets.

There are three suicide attempts. Well, almost attempts.

The first time she takes one of her silk scarves and ties it to the ceiling fan. She remembers something about it being a painful way to go, and she doesn't go through with it.

She fantasizes about slicing her wrists, but she thinks that'd be too slow. (Plus every time she accidently cuts herself with a razor in the bathroom it kind of creeps her out).

She finally decides on downing a pill bottle of her Daddy's heart meds. She tries to take them, but too bad she forgets to lock the door and Papa rushes her to her therapist.

Her therapist is a long woman with kind eyes.

"Why did you do this, Rachel?"

"Why do you think?" Is her harsh reply.

"Would Noah have pushed you out of the way if he wanted you to kill yourself?"

Rachel says nothing.

Her therapist leaves her alone.

Rachel collects herself in time for school. Everyone avoids her like the plague. She doesn't talk to anyone, not one person understands. Miss Pillsbury asks to talk to her, and Rachel notes a big shining diamond on her ring finger.

"Did Mr. Schue give that to you?"

"What? The ring? Yes."

"Oh."

That ring comes to symbolize all that she didn't get to have with Noah. She resents Miss Pillsbury, who's face and name remind her of Puck's favorite dough boy.

It's late September when she figures out her period is late. She tries not to get excited.

Tries. She practically sprints to the Walgreens in town. She buys fifteen pregnancy tests.

All come out positive.

She practically shrieks with joy.

She's happy and she starts to talk to people again.

She goes for a walk on the road. She stops where he died. She can still see dark spots where his blood was. She never goes to the graveyard, because this feels more theirs. She sits on the spot and smiles.

"Thank you for giving me this gift, Noah."

Somewhere, off their Road, somewhere way up there, she knows he's saying you're welcome. And he probably just made some dirty joke, because that's just how he works.

How _they _work _together. _


End file.
